I think this comment was just a popularist repetition of discourse from social media. In other words it's a "tiktok ahh take".
GP is more cynical than I would have put it, but I think it's directionally correct; it's an easy way for the C-suite to demonstrate "due diligence" on any decision.
McKinsey would like you to think otherwise of course. They paint a brand image of only doing high-end C-suite strategy work, but ultimately thats a vanishingly small part of the business. Their bread is buttered (just like Accenture) on labor heavy implementation gigs.
Fundamentally, the business of billing out human hours is the same, as are the the incentives. Doesn't matter if its a strategy consulting firm in NYC or an advertising agency in Nepal.
They will all inflate scope, inflate titles/rates, hire mostly cheap new grads, and slowroll-and-expand any engagement.
And they will all take ANY work you give them, regardless of in-house expertise (which they rarely have, given the goal is to pay employees as little as possible to capture margin).
The advertising agency in Nepal will claim to offer strategy consulting to your C-suite, just as McKinsey NYC will happily churn out a powerpoint deck about advertising in Nepal if you're willing to pay them.
Hence why professional services firms all trade at low multiples. It's an undifferentiated commodity business of re-selling human labor in project-based chunks.
In fact, the bear case on Palantir is always that it's actually a consulting firm masquerading as a Saas firm.
They happen to have a SaaS product, but you cannot use it without paying up front for huge amounts of pro services. The SaaS product doesn’t work on its own. This isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s not magic software either.
It annoys me because these guys never tell us anything we don't know and they are just in the way because they want to butt into everything to prove their value.
It feels like management doesn't trust us either. Though the reason they're there is more kickbacks and old boys network corruption. Our previous department head got a high paying job at Deloitte.
Accenture are mostly a bunch of low level talentless grunts. There are a lot of them. If you're hiring Accenture then you are in trouble in more ways than one.
Pure strategy advice represents less than 20% of McKinsey billings (as publicly revealed last year).
Both firms are full of low level talentless grunts, essentially just fresh grads from different tier schools.
The only measurable difference between the two is that Accenture makes heavy use of geographic talent arbitrage by hiring heavily in India so they can do higher volume/lower-rate implementation gigs. The companies that spend the most with consulting firms are usually legacy dying companies and governments, not exactly a picture of competence (you think OpenAI or Anthropic are asking strategy advice from McKinsey?)
All professional services firms are commodity human time resellers, there is no special sauce or reality behind the 'brand narrative' behind any particular firm.
What has the veneer of sophistication but is actually garbage quality…
Ferrari vs Alfa Romeo, perhaps?
Brooks Brothers maybe?
Not really the same thing as McKinsey, Bain, BCG.
Plumbing is fractionally less regulated where I am and I am allowed to change my own taps washers, but a whole tap assembly falls under similar issues as a power switch.